So, we'd like to share with you the changes and developments going on at the garden this year, that were started, tentatively over the past few years, but have really started to take shape.

There are a few main focuses at the B.E.E. Community Farm. The first, is the development of our native orchard. We are learning the benefits and purposes of the plants that grow around us here in Birmingham. We are learning about the "weeds", and studying what they bring to the ecosystem. We are studying the health and medicinal benefits, and how to harvest and use them. We are planting trees, flowers and bushes that specific birds, butterflies, bees and other pollinators like. We are learning which insects are helping us control the aphids, which ones are feeding on our plants, and who to attract that feast on mosquitos!

It is amazing the system that is already in place in our ecosystem. And what is more amazing, is that this system has worked for hundreds of thousands of years. It only makes sense that we learn FROM nature, and we learn to live in harmony with it.

This leads to our next major focus, which is developing this space into a community food forest. We are working to establish more perennial plants in the garden. We already have quite a few fruit trees, and we have been learning how to care for those, and what we can plant with them to further encourage healthy growth. If you'd like to read more about this, here's a great article:

The basic idea of a food forest is a low-maintenance sustainable system based on a forest eco-system, and incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables.

The third element that composes B.E.E. Community Farm is the community. We have families at the garden that have their own plots. We have new picnic tables, we have collected some tools and gloves for people to use when they come out, we have more rain barrels. We are working to develop education in the garden and host classes, workshops and events to invite the community around us to join in, and work together to develop this for our friends and family, our neighbors, ourselves. A place to gather, relax, grow food, real food, reclaim our health that we seem to have lost! Let's return a little love and care to the Earth that provides us with food, water and air.

Introducing our new campaign........."Beet Cancer in the Garden"! We are super excited about this project! Check out our logo, done by an amazingly talented artist and dear friend, Kimmie Carper:

our main educational focus will be on 2 superfoods, beets and kale.

We have met with Susan G. Komen about this project and they are very supportive. We are developing our relationship with them, and working on how we can work together to educate about the correlation of food and health to reduced risk of cancer, and for your health as you battle cancer. We have also worked with the green bottle candle company, and we will be selling candles made specifically for this campaign as a fundraiser! Proceeds will be divided between us and Susan G. Komen.

We also filed for our non-profit status, yesterday, actually, so we are very hopeful that this will come through soon, and we can start raising some money to help implement all of our fantastic ideas! =)

More soon!

Well, clearly we have not kept up with the blog portion of our website, and I apologize for that! We really do love the garden, and the gardening, but it is difficult to keep the website active and up to date when we stay so busy in life! I'm sure all you bloggers out there can understand that better than even we can, since we've failed to even attempt to keep our blog current! I will try to remedy this.

Anyway, the Birmingham Eastside Ecogardens has been active and busy over the past year, as I hope we have shown by our pictures. We have gone from having one family on the land to 4 families with a garden space.

We had a productive summer, and plenty of rain this year, compared to our drought last summer! We were able to keep everything watered using our rain barrels without having to haul anything in! Hurray! We had okra, both red and green, several types of peppers, tomatoes, chard, a few squash and pumpkins, figs, peaches and pears (only a few) canteloup, watermelon, black-eyed peas, lima beans and green beans!

Right now we are in transition time between the 2 seasons, but we have gourds, persimmons and muscadine grapes,and golden-rod everywhere! The pineapple sage is blooming right now and it is just gorgeous!

We hosted a composting class at the garden this summer, led by Captain Compost, and it was fantastic! We also have worked with some 4-H students, and had a group of students from North Carolina pass through in the spring.

I hope this fills you in on some of our happenings! Keep supporting the B.E.E. Community as we continue to work and grow! We need all of your love sent our way, as it is a large space, and can get the better of us sometimes (especially mowing in the summer, sheesh!!!)

Bee was started in 2011 by a few of us who wanted to do work in the community, and we all love to garden. We all took a class together on community gardening, and through a series of events we were led to the EcoFarm.

We instantly fell in love with the space, for obvious reasons, and we soon found out that there was nothing going on at the EcoFarm at the time, and that volunteers were needed. A little overwhelmed, we decided to return to the space as soon as possible and see what we could do to help. The weeds were high, invasive species, really a joke, mimosa trees were taking over everything, and poke weeds, and milk weeds, and blackberry vines, and ant hills, and awful grass...

We tentatively started clearing out all of the six foot tall weeds around and in the compost, cutting grass, edging around beds, and as time wore on, the space started to become presentable again. By May, we were ready to plant some beds, and we had a couple from the neighborhood, that had plenty of time and plenty of seeds, the perfect combination. We began filling the beds that were left one by one, and then, having a little too much fun, one of our volunteers began making beds all over the place so she could keep planting! This was just the kind of thing we were hoping for!

There were 8 beds already built, originally for herbs, according to the diagram on the SEC website... and on our first visit out there was one family plot, a pretty awesome job that family has done by the way... and in the 8 beds for herbs there were strawberries in one of the small beds, and tomatos in 2 of them... this left 6 unattended (and most of the remaining 2 acres of space!) On our first visit, we met a woman from the SEC who informed us that they were keeping the area mowed and other than that, not much activity. The SEC has been kind to work with... though that mowing only happened one time (and that was when WE were allowed to borrow a mower) at least to our knowledge anyway!

Long story short... the summer wore on, there were weeds, the grass kept growing faster than we could cut it... then July came and we had weeks of 100 degree weather, accompanied by a serious drought (oh yeah, and a few rain barrels and water catchment are our only source of watering the area at this time)!!!

It has been hard and diligent work, and with the help of some local volunteers, the support of the community garden coalition, and mostly tons and tons of weeding, hoeing, watering, mowing, whacking, stomping, planting, pulling from BEE, the Community Garden at EcoFarm is up and running, and the EcoFarm is starting to take shape...